I stole a lady's groceries and then a bunch of other stuff.

One day when I was 12, I was hanging outside the neighborhood grocery store. I don't remember what I was doing, but I was bored and decided I wanted to do something bad. I don't know if it was something I had always thought about but hadn't done yet, or if it was something new. I just know I decided I was going to steal some grocery purchases from the people that were putting them in their cars. I decided the best way to do this was to wait until the person was distracted, then just walk over to their car and take some of their bags, throw them in my backpack and walk away.<br><br>This is exactly what I did. I waited until some lady put her groceries in her van to to a kid who was smaller than me into the van seat. While she was distracted, I walked over to the side of the van and grabbed two bags and walked away. I went behind a church and opened the bags to see what I had. I didn't think I stole full bags, but what I did have was full bottles of liquor, unopened packs of cigarettes and unopened cartons of cigarettes. I smoked sometimes but not a full pack a day. I was ecstatic.<br><br>Over the next few months, I did this many times. I never got caught. I never saw anyone even look at me while I was doing it. This only fueled me and made me bolder. I stole a full grocery cart once, and even stole a couple of full sacks of dog food. I don't smoke nearly a pack a day, but I had around 35-40 cartons of cigarettes at one point and was selling them for $3/pack. One night, I came up with the bright idea to grab empty shopping carts from a lot of different stores, and block the drive-thru of a McDonald's. I don't know what I thought this was going to do, but I thought it would be funny. I grabbed around 15 carts from a lot of different places, and blocked the drive-thru of a McDonald's around 10:30pm. The next morning, I walked around the block where I put the carts, and counted how many different places I got the carts from. I had carts from five different places. I don't know if anyone got in trouble, or who got blamed, but I thought it was funny as hell.<br><br>Also, I lived in a neighborhood that had a lot of people around, even at night. There were a bunch of streetlights and porch lights that were always on, so you could always see. One night, I don't know what made me do it, I decided to turn every trash can in a 4 block area over. There were around 70 houses, and each side of the street had around 8-10 houses, so there was probably 100 houses, and each house had 2-4 trash cans. I turned over a lot of trash cans that night.<br><br>When I was younger I used to ride my bike around everywhere. There was a woman that lived about half a block from me who would make me cookies. Her and her husband were very nice. One day, I was bored so I decided to take a shit on their doorstep. It wasn't the first time I had done something to a random person, but this may have been the first time I did something so heinous. I didn't get caught and I think they forgot about it after a few days. This fueled me to do more. I would find out who had different cars and houses in my neighborhood. I knew who had the nicest things. One night, I decided to take a shit in a bucket on a man's front porch. I coated his door handle in it, and then put the rest of it in his bucket. I also threw a full garbage bag from my house onto their front yard and then walked away.<br><br>The worst thing I did was to a family down the street from me. It was three generations living in the same house. I called them to see who answered the phone, and then I would send them a pizza that they didn't order. The first time I did it, they tried to pay for it but the pizza place said they had no record of the order, so it was free. The second time I did it, the lady who answered said they already received a free pizza and she wasn't falling for it again. I laughed so hard. I didn't know if I should feel bad, but it was kind of funny.<br><br>This has been on my mind a lot lately, and I think I will contact the grocery store I was at, and pay them for the groceries I stole. Its been over 20 years since it happened, but I still go to the store and I think about it every time.